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Jenkins was born in Victorville, California,[3] to William T. Jenkins, an Air Force captain and fighter pilot who earned a Silver Star in the Vietnam War, and Emily Roth, who worked in San Francisco as an environmental scientist.[4] She has an older sister, Elaine Roth.[3]

When Jenkins was 7, her father died during a NATO mock dogfight at the age of 31. Her mother then took her and her sister to San Francisco so that Jenkins could go to school to become an environmental scientist. There, Jenkins said in 2017, seeing the original Superman starring Christopher Reeve inspired her to pursue film as a career[5]

In 2011 she directed one segment in the made-for-television anthology film Five. In October 2011, she was hired to direct Thor: The Dark World, the first sequel to Thor, but left the project after less than two months over creative differences.[11] In 2014, she was attached to Sweetheart, a film about a female assassin,[12] but that film was never made. In 2015, Jenkins signed on as director for the DC Extended Universe film Wonder Woman,[13] with a screenplay by Allan Heinberg and a story co-written by Heinberg, Zack Snyder and Jason Fuchs.[14]Wonder Woman was released in June 2017 and gave Jenkins the biggest domestic opening for a female director, surpassing previous record holder Fifty Shades of Grey by Sam Taylor-Johnson).[15] With this film, Jenkins also became the first female director of an American studio superhero movie.[16]Wonder Woman eventually became the highest-grossing film directed by a woman, surpassing previous record holder Mamma Mia! by Phyllida Lloyd.[17]

While promoting Wonder Woman, Jenkins mentioned that her next project would likely be a limited television series developed with her husband.[1] This project was later revealed as a horror series titled Riprore to premiere on the video-on-demand service Shudder.[18] In July 2017, the US cable network TNT announced Jenkins would direct the premiere of a six-episode television drama, I Am the Night, written by her author husband Sam Sheridan and featuring her Wonder Woman star Chris Pine. She additionally will serve as an executive producer.[19]

In September 2017, Variety reported Jenkins would return to direct Wonder Woman 2.[20] On December 6, 2017, Jenkins was named by Time magazine as a runner-up for the Time Person of the Year.[21]Wonder Woman 1984 is scheduled to be released by Warner Bros. Pictures in the United States on June 5, 2020. It had originally been scheduled for November 1, 2019.[22] She has been negotiating the terms of her contract with Warner Brothers for an estimated 7 to 9 million dollars, which will be a record breaking salary for a female filmmaker. She signed on to the first film with no guarantee of directing a second film, but envisioned the second one during the making of Wonder Woman, which turned out to benefit her greatly. When she was signed on to do the second film, she had the ability to get a much higher salary than she would have if she had been signed on to do both films from the beginning. Her goal with her negotiations were to make sure she would get the same salary that her male counter parts would be getting for doing this movie and she seems to have succeeded.[5]

Jenkins, Wonder Woman actresses Gal Gadot and Lynda Carter, DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson, and U.N. Under-Secretary General Cristina Gallach appeared at the United Nations on October 21, 2016, the 75th anniversary of the first appearance of Wonder Woman, to mark the character's designation by the United Nations as its "Honorary Ambassador for the Empowerment of Women and Girls".[23][24] The gesture was intended to raise awareness of UN Sustainable Development Goal No. 5, which seeks to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls by 2030.[23][24][25] The decision was met with protests from UN staff members who stated in their petition to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that the character is "not culturally encompassing or sensitive", and served to objectify women. As a result, the character was stripped of the designation, and the project ended December 16.[25]

In the film Monster, she explored the issues of morality and feminity.[26] In Wonder Woman, Jenkins suggests that the audience experiences the journey of the lead character Diana Prince through Diana's eyes. Diana is portrayed as the universal human character who the audiences never experience from the outside. Jenkins suggests that the major theme of the film is the idea of there being no other villain, but humans themselves. She mentions how she was influenced by Superman and how that is incorporated in her own superhero film.

Some of Jenkins' mentors and influencers includes Gary Ross, Kathryn Bigelow and Steve Perry. She mentions that she often likes to discuss the process of making music with musicians like Steve. The organization and structure of music, according to Jenkins, has a lot of parallels to theater and drama. She uses this rhythm, as a director, to direct the delivery of dialogues.

^ abdel Barco, Mandalit (June 2, 2017). "'When Time Was New': 'Wonder Woman' Brings Sunlight To The DC Universe". New Hampshire Public Radio. Archived from the original on July 5, 2017. Retrieved July 27, 2017. She was born in 1971 on an Air Force base in Victorville, Calif. Her father had been an F4 fighter pilot during Vietnam. And the family moved around a lot - Cambodia, Thailand and Kansas after he died. In Lawrence, Jenkins' mother worked as an environmental scientist, raising two daughters as a single mother. Elaine Roth remembers her little sister Patty...Cite uses deprecated parameter |deadurl= (help)